216 WARFARE IN THE HUMAN BODY 



afforded the opportunity of fertilizing them he would 

 be all the more powerful in fertilizing the earth. It may 

 be that there are still gods about some of those springs 

 which are held to cure sterility and impotence, at Orezza 

 it may be, and perhaps at Buxton, Wildbad, and Gastein. 

 There some magical balneologists call confidently on the 

 radium emanation which must have been a powerful 

 water spirit even in earlier times. There may be a sub- 

 stratum of truth in the most extravagant magic or myth. 

 It was said above that, in some senses, nothing that 

 we can do is really natural. If then bathing was 

 originally unnatural and dangerous, especially to those 

 who could not swim, and found water and water spirits 

 deadly, it remains to be shown how superstition of all 

 kinds led by devious paths to washing, to purification 

 and fertilizing purposes, and hence by slow degrees to 

 medicinal uses, and finally to purposes of cleanliness. 

 Primitive man never washed to be clean, he washed to get 

 rid of some influence and, in spite of his ignorance and 

 his mistaken magical views, there is, in many of these 

 savage customs, essential Tightness, almost scientific 

 accuracy. If the method of trial and error, handled 

 intelligently, is the main source of most advances in 

 knowledge, magic often hits the actual truth. In Mexico 

 the Huichol Indians during a drought take water from 

 a sacred spring and carry it a long distance to the sea. 

 Water from the sea is carried and put into the spring. 

 Now, why is this done ? Is it possible that no one sees 

 the reason at once ? The water in its alien surround- 

 ings will obviously be uneasy and uncomfortable and 

 rise in vapour. What can be more natural than that ? 

 The water tries to get home, but both clouds of expat- 

 riated vapour meet in the heavens, cause clouds, and 



